


September

by entwashian



Category: Live Free or Die Hard (2007)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-12-19
Updated: 2007-12-19
Packaged: 2018-01-25 04:55:51
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1632638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/entwashian/pseuds/entwashian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>Written for Chaya</p>
    </blockquote>





	September

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Chaya

 

 

Matt's been called paranoid frequently -- and sometimes volubly -- in the past. It naturally follows that he's pretty pissed off when he finds out that the renter's insurance which he was ridiculed for purchasing only covers him for explosions, and not "civil commotion" or whatever buzzwords the claims adjuster uses. So Matt gets to pay his former landlord a large sum of money **and** immediately find himself a new apartment.

The good news from the tinny voice on the phone is that Matt's insurance payout is for ACV -- "actual cash value," the adjuster intones, and Matt finds out she's from Boston. It takes longer for Matt to finally receive his money, but it means that he gets to spend it however he sees fit.

The first thing he does is replace his computer. Then he goes to see a fat man who wears a chartreuse suit and calls himself "Slim." Slim tries to sell Matt on the inevitable red convertible, but Matt's nowhere near his midlife crisis yet, and, besides, he wants something that won't get him noticed. He settles on a 1994 Honda Accord, the color of which can't exactly be described as tan, but can't really be called silver, either.

After the events of last July, Matt figures it's better to have a car and not need one, than to need a car and not have one. Quite a lot of the things going on in Matt's life lately can be prefaced by the phrase "after the events of last July".

After the events of last July, when Matt pings the Warlock, he no longer gets a response. After the events of last July, Matt's still on the NSA's watch list of black hats. In fact, after the events of last July, Matt's pretty sure that he and the Warlock are the only two left on that list living in the Northeastern United States. After the events of last July, Matt signs a confidentiality agreement, and can't tell even his mother the truth about how he got shot in the knee. Consequently, after the events of last July, Matt unplugs his landline from the jack, and doesn't bother to replace his cell.

After the events of last July, John McClane's face is on every television set in every living room across America. Matt watches in morbid fascination.

The interviewer is some blonde reporter he's never heard of, who introduces herself as Samantha Coleman. When John comes on, he calls her Sam.

She commences the segment by remarking that when she first met McClane, it was in an elevator in Washington, DC in 1990, and he was climbing out the roof. Later that night, he personally took two dozen lives, and saved hundreds.

Even as John is being introduced, it's obvious to Matt that he doesn't want to be there. The reporter (Matt decides to think of her as `Sam', since John does) mentions two other occasions (LA, 1984; NY, 1995) when John "...came out of the woodwork to become a hero."

"Wrong place, wrong place." John smiles a close-lipped smile.

Sam takes the interview from the distant past in to the recent past. John parrots the party line, about terrorists hell-bent on the destruction of the United States government, which doesn't include mentions of Matt, or Woodlawn, or Thomas Gabriel. It does mention a fire sale.

Although the rest of America probably takes no special notice, Matt can see how taxing the lies are for John to tell. But then, that's part of the confidentiality agreement that **John** signed, in return for a medal, and, more importantly, the void of the name "Lucy McClane" on all official records regarding the attack.

Even though she's subtle about it, Matt notices that Sam pulls her punches when questioning John about his family, and it dawns on Matt just how this no-name reporter snagged the interview of the decade. Because John trusted her to do this for him, and because, a few minutes later, the gloves come off, and John is talking about his battle with alcoholism in the mid-nineties, about his two partners in the NYPD who died on the job, and about how he carries his sidearm even when he's not on duty.

The last question Sam asks is not on the note cards that she casually abandons, and it has the implicit tone of a challenge. She looks John straight in the eye, and asks, "Why bother?"

Matt can hear the dry retort before it's actually formed, but John gives a real answer, instead.

"You expect great things from people; you get disappointed. But then there are the other people, who you don't expect anything from, people that surprise you." John's looking directly at the camera for the first time during the interview, and whatever words he says next are drowned out by the ones Matt plays back from memory.

"That's what makes you `that guy'."

*****

At first, it's easy to pretend he's **not** "that guy", since his family all think he's an addict who got shot by a rampaging drug lord. And it's easy to keep a low profile, since he knows the sort of thing for which the NSA is monitoring him.

So he doesn't, say, hack the FBI and CIA files on John McClane (though, really, all he has to do is Google the name, and there are about a googol of hits, with all the information Matt could've ever wanted to know), but he does download every Creedence Clearwater Revival album ever released, and keep them exactly one hour over the mandated 24-hour "evaluation period" before deleting them without listening to a single song.

He also pirates old movies, because no agency is going to drag him into court over _Two Mules for Sister Sara_. When Matt is finally bored enough to watch the movie, he notes that Clint Eastwood is threateningly squinty-eyed, speaks in a curt tenor, and shoots from the hip.

McClane would totally kick his ass.

Also, John probably wouldn't have the same reservation about leaving someone behind in the desert, just because she was wearing a nun's habit. But then, he hadn't exactly left Matt behind, either. Maybe John secretly had the patience of a saint. If so, the nun, phony or not, might be in good hands. This is the conclusion Matt is pondering when he looks at the clock and realizes that it's three a.m.

Matt wakes up the next morning (okay, _afternoon_ ) with a jones to **get out**. And, Jesus, he may not have any family or friends any more, but he's got a car and can drive anywhere his heart desires.

Forty-five minutes later, he finds himself in a place that calls itself simply "Cyber Café". It's a very unimaginative name, and lends itself to innuendo, if Matt thinks of "cyber" as a verb, and not a prefix. Also, they charge $5 for 10 minutes. Fortunately, 10 minutes is all Matt needs, and he's soon on the road to New York, with John McClane's address, and directions from MapQuest.

When he knocks on the door to McClane's apartment, Matt has a moment of wishing he'd worn a wimple, intensifying briefly when John answers the door without saying a word. Then he steps back, and gives a sort-of nod, and Matt brushes past him.

"So, it's entirely possible I'm not adjusting all that well." Matt sticks his hands in his pockets, and rocks back on his heels.

"Adjusting to what?" John asks, and Matt has to let out a giggle, because, really, **everything**.

"Well, let's see... they had me sign a confidentiality agreement, and gave me a cover story, so, _legally_ speaking, I'm not really adjusting to the whole `I accidentally stumbled into a sting operation and the drug dealer thought I was involved and tried to retaliate' thing."

"Sting operation?" John actually looks slightly amused. "How'd that work out for you?"

"It was a bust." Matt runs a hand through his hair, and adds, "Seriously, my own mother thinks I'm a narc, and she's got my whole family trying to stage an intervention to get me to kick my bag-a-day habit."

"And she managed to convince your `whole family' that you're a drug addict based solely on wild supposition."

"It didn't exactly help matters that the first time she saw me after I got out of the hospital, I was deep in prayer to the porcelain god, thanks to the Vicodin they prescribed for my knee. And it's not just my family, either. She's gotten to my old friends, recent friends, third grade teacher, everyone." Matt sinks despondently into John's black leather sofa, making a conscious effort not to stroke the buttery smooth surface with his hands. It's very cushy.

"You should feel lucky to have so many people care about you." John seats himself on the sofa's matching armchair. The furniture is so out-of-place in the sparsely decorated apartment that Matt surreptitiously takes a second look. There's a flat screen TV and a sizable sound system, but no evidence of any DVDs or CDs.

The only photo in the room has got to be at least 15 years old; it features a younger, dark-haired John, a boy, a girl, and a pretty woman with an eighties perm. It's pretty obvious where Lucy McClane got her red hair from.

"How is Lucy doing?" Matt asks, and when John's expression gets deceptively blank, he tacks on a quick, "Yeah, yeah, I remember, beaten to death."

"She's fine," John says neutrally. He goes on to admit, "I haven't actually spoken to her in a couple weeks."

"Ah, so it's Lucy Gennaro this month," Matt says before he can stop himself, and then tries to gloss over his statement by rushing on, "Hey, you wanna go get something to eat? Because I haven't had anything for, like," Matt checks his watch, "huh. Six hours."

"I don't do a lot of dining out these days." John walks into the kitchen, comes back carrying a stack of take-out menus and two bottles of beer. He hands Matt everything except one of the beers.

"Um, Thai's good," Matt says, after awkwardly shuffling through the menus.

John pads over to the phone, and Matt notices for the first time that his feet are bare.

"I'm a stay-in type of person, myself," Matt says. "Don't know why I got so restless today. But you're not exactly the same type of person I am."

"It's the reporters," John replies, dialing the phone. "They had my face splattered everywhere. I can't leave the building without getting recognized."

Matt has a sudden vision of grainy paparazzi shots, like the ones featured in _The National Enquirer_. Only instead of Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt sunbathing on a Mediterranean beach, they feature John McClane and an unknown man behind the glass of a Thai restaurant, eating orange noodles. In one of the shots, John is laughing with crinkle-eyed pleasure at a joke his dark-haired companion has just made. Maybe there's even a shot of them hugging goodbye as they leave the restaurant.

"On a scale of one to ten, how hot do you like it?"

"What?" Matt jumps guiltily when he realizes that John is addressing him.

John shrugs. "That's what the restaurant always asks me."

Several beers and several hours later, Matt realizes that he's a little too buzzed to be driving, and it's a little too late to be making the drive, anyway.

John dismisses it as the easiest problem he's ever solved, and grants Matt custody for the night of the couch he's already sprawled out across. Matt thinks it's a good thing humans can't purr, because if they did, he'd be making a fool out of himself at that very moment.

*****

It's still pretty dark when Matt is woken up, but that's because John still has most of the lights off.

"Hey, kid, I'm going to work. Make sure you lock the door when you leave."

Matt tries to wave him off, but John is determined to extract a verbal promise before he leaves, and by the time he does, Matt's mind is fully awake. He figures that it's a good thing he sleeps on his belly, despite the occasional crook in his neck, because his morning wood has decided to rise and shine.

He stumbles into the bathroom, turns on the shower, and begins to lather up. Masturbating in someone else's room always feels a little skeevy to Matt, but it's the easiest way to solve his current predicament.

He decides to just hurry up and **do it** before the weirdness starts to settle in. Anxious to get it over with, Matt braces his left hand against the wall, and thrusts his cock into the other hand with short, rough strokes, tilting his head back so that the water falls on his exposed neck.

He can tell he'd getting close to the release he's looking for when the way he's rubbing his dick starts to burn a little, and then the thought dawns on Matt that he's not just in "someone else's" room, he's in John-fucking-McClane's shower, using John-fucking-McClane's soap, and, God, he's going to **smell** like John for hours.

Matt leans in to press his forehead against the cool, slick tile beneath the shower head, and as the hot water begins to hit his shoulders and run down his back, he uses this new leverage to move his left hand to his groin to stroke his balls as he continues to thrust into his right hand. When he comes, Matt thinks about the way John's hands look when wrapped around a gun, and bites the inside of his lower lip so hard that he tastes blood.

His heart is still pounding as he exits the shower, and, contemplating the crumpled pile of clothes he wore yesterday, Matt resists the urge to raid John's bedroom for a clean t-shirt.

He checks the fridge in the kitchen for some sort of sustenance, but all he finds is more beer, a carton of leftover Thai from the previous night, and a jar of pickles. He doesn't open the freezer, for fear that all he would find is a bottle of vodka.

He's run out of excuses to linger in John's apartment, but just as Matt is opening the front door, he hears the phone begin to ring. He knows it's crossing the line from Nosy into Possibly Stalkery, but Matt closes the door and waits for the answering machine to start recording.

"Hey, kid, it's me. If you're still there, I got some tickets to the baseball game this Saturday afternoon--" Matt starts his mad dash for the phone as soon as he hears John's voice, and as he picks up the phone, Matt thinks of baseball, hot afternoon sunshine bleaching his vision, drunken loudmouth hecklers, and peanut shells stuck in his hair, and

"Yeah, sure, I'd love to go," he answers.

 


End file.
